Precision Ag's Satellite image of the paddock provides highly detailed picture of variations in productivity of the crop, information fed into an App to manage the farm.

(Supplied: Precision Ag)

While investment in digital technology for agriculture trails all other sectors, especially finance, the industry is sensing a boom in adoption by farmers.

Less than $5 million was invested in Australian ag tech deals last year, while globally the figure was $4 billion, according to Michael Dean, a co-founder of the US-based Ag Funder who spoke at a recent Queensland conference.

The Australian Farm Institute's conference in Sydney highlighted how digital technology was "fundamentally changing agriculture", away from skills-based management to a more industrialised model, where decisions are based on objective data.

Among the Australian ag tech companies leading the way is The Yield, which has recently developed a risk assessment app for the Tasmanian oyster industry.

Founder Ros Harvey, an adjunct professor of the Queensland University Technology, worked with Barilla Bay Oysters, which wanted to calculate the risks to oysters from contamination after rain.

The company faced between $20,000 and $100,000 in losses each day health authorities closed the farm.

Snapshot of the app combining sensor data and tide times with salinity to reduce cost risks associated with closure of the estuary by food safety regulators

Snapshot of the app combining sensor data and tide times with salinity to reduce cost risks associated with closure of the estuary by food safety regulators

Supplied by The Yield

"What we do is put real-time salinity sensors in the water with the oyster and use that as a proxy instead," Professor Harvey said.

"So we can get a 30-per-cent reduction in unnecessary closure days."

In April this year, The Yield won a $2.5 million investment from the European-based Bosch Group, which it will use to employ 25 highly skilled staff to generate new technology in the food and agriculture sector.

Professor Salah Sakkarieh of the Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney explains the latest robot to PM Malcolm Turnbull and Marise Payne, defence minister

Data partners for sheep

The Sheep and Data to Decisions (D2D) Cooperative Research Centres have announced a partnership to collect data to help predict growth, pasture, parasite burdens, and production for prime lambs.

"We're working now on a program to predict specific risks for sheep; like lack of feed, parasites and extreme weather events," Sheep CRC's Dr James Rowe said.

"With the help of the D2D, CRC we'll construct the architecture so we can import Bureau of Meteorology data, genetic data and on farm data, to identify the risks for weeks and months."

Until now, the D2D CRC had been more focussed on defence, national security and intelligence.

Chief executive Dr Sanjay Mazumdar said while it was not vital for his team to know about sheep, it was important to share technology.

"We are entering a period of unprecedented potential for big data applications to transform productivity in many industries and the collaboration between the D2D and Sheep CRCs provides a unique and timely opportunity for the Australian sheep industry," Dr Rowe said.

He said the CRC was still receiving genotype information from the nucleus flock, from 2007 to 2014, which controversially lost its funding from Australian Wool Innovation.

"That is a really high quality set of data that includes production, meat or wool quality, genetics and genomics," Dr Rowe said.

"But at that time we weren't able to include climate data, which we're doing now."